Related

David Huot has spent $800,000 to open up a youth hostel in Quebec’s Charlevoix region, one with cushy private rooms and queen beds designed to appeal to a new breed of young backpackers known in the hostelling business as flashpackers.

Flashpackers are backpackers with more disposable income. They are generally a bit older than backpackers — in their late 20s or early 30s, as opposed to late teens and early 20s. They have jobs, steady incomes and they travel with all the latest electronics from laptops to digital cameras to cellphones to iPods.

“They’re still attracted to hostels,” Huot said, “but they’ve arrived at a point in their lives where they are looking for something more comfortable than a dormitory bed.”

Huot’s Auberge de Jeunesse La Malbaie, which opened last month, is situated in a large two-storey brick house built in 1944 that used to belong to the late Arthur Leclerc, a former Quebec minister of health in the late 1950s whose grandson, Jean Leloup, is a Quebec recording artist.

Huot spent $400,000 to buy the property and another $400,000 to gut the interior, creating a new kind of hybrid hostel by offering private rooms on the top floor in conjunction with traditional spartan dormitory accommodations in the basement. The first floor consists of a reception area, communal kitchen and licensed bar. Huot spent an extra $25,000 in special soundproofing to help guests sleep peacefully at night.

The 32 dormitory beds in the five basement rooms rent for $18 to $24 a night. On the second floor, there are three private rooms with double beds at $58 a night, in addition to a royal suite for $96 (equipped with queen bed, private balcony and private bathroom), a family suite for $86 (queen bed, double bed and private bathroom) and a romantic suite for $78 (queen bed, private bathroom and see-through-glass shower adjacent to the bed).

Huot, 28, is a native of St-Jérôme who obtained his university degree in sustainable tourism in Lyons, France, before coming home to Canada with a plan to open up a hostel in Vancouver.

“But then I said to myself, ‘No, I want to run one mainly in French,’ ” Huot said.

So he returned to Quebec and looked for the right business opportunity.

“I looked for a region that I thought had the potential to become a strong year-round tourism destination. And that’s what brought me to Charlevoix. My thinking is that the Montreal-Tadoussac corridor is where the growth is going to be in tourism among young professionals.”

Huot invested his own savings and has brought in his father and a friend as investors. The Caisse Desjardins provided him with a $340,000 loan and the federal government lent him $150,000 through a regional economic development program.

Like most hostels around the world, Auberge de Jeunesse La Malbaie is a private business. There are 15 hostels in Quebec and Ontario, some of which are for-profit businesses, like Huot’s hostel, while others are private not-for-profit enterprises, like the HI-Montreal Hostel on Mackay St. in downtown Montreal.

The HI prefix is short for Hostelling International, an association with which 4,000 hostels in 90 countries are affiliated. Not all hostels are part of the HI network; in Montreal, the Gîte du Plateau Mont-Royal on Sherbrooke St. E. and the M Montreal Hostel on St-André St. operate outside the HI network.

But hostels both inside and outside of the network, said HI-Montreal marketing director Gaël Chartrand, are under pressure to provide more upscale accommodation. In fact, HI-Montreal is currently adding more private rooms and seeing a slightly older average age of clientele, she said.

“In French, we’re moving slowly to rebranding ourselves simply as an ‘auberge,’ as opposed to an ‘auberge de jeunesse,’ whereas in English, we tend now to just use the word ‘hostel,’ ” Chartrand said.

As a result of this transformation in hostelling, hostels are moving into more direct competition with mainstream budget hotels — with hostels having a comparative advantage when it comes to social activities. “With hostels, you always have organized bike trips and bar hops and things like that,” Chartrand said.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.